Moments ago, the "General Motors Company" filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC for an initial public offering. It's the first time GM has offered an IPO since 1916. Walk through all 250+ pages of the filing with us.UPDATE
Get the full filing at the SEC's website. For starters we know the ticker symbol will be "GM."
UPDATE: For all the numbers GM includes, it left out the most important ones. No share price targets, no hard numbers for shares offered, no word on how much the government is selling.
A lot of those numbers will be filled in over the coming weeks, ahead of an actual share sale expected sometime in early November. The Obama administration will sell some of its 61% stake, and won't get to pick directors anymore. Some of the shares will be sold directly to the public.
A few other notes: Whether the IPO raises $15 billion or $20 billion, most of that money won't go to GM, but to whichever of its shareholders - the U.S. & Canadian governments, the health-care trust fund for UAW retirees and old GM bondholders - decide to sell shares. GM will only get money from the sale of some preferred shares.
GM does tout that it will have 46 new or refreshed models in North America through 2014, and that at least half of its volume by then will come from global platforms. Which leads us to the one sentence that matters more than any other in this blizzard of legalese:
The continued increase in U.S. industry vehicle sales and the vehicle sales of our four brands is critical for us to achieve our worldwide profitability.
Start saving those pennies now; previous analyst guesses put the per-share price in an IPO around $100.